


For a Star to be Born

by typervoxilations



Series: plot bunnies [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Gen, Gore, No pairing - Freeform, Not Romance, Oneshot, Poetic, Violence, but really a series of oneshots, gore and more gore, kind of but not really, long-winded
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:11:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2274465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typervoxilations/pseuds/typervoxilations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Dedicated to Jason, because Ián is just basically you anyways, hehe.<br/>Hope you like it! :)<br/>Thanks for being awesome and putting up with all the ideas I've ever thrown your way in high school.<br/>(I still think I should somehow finish that dragon story)</p>
    </blockquote>





	For a Star to be Born

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Jason, because Ián is just basically you anyways, hehe.  
> Hope you like it! :)  
> Thanks for being awesome and putting up with all the ideas I've ever thrown your way in high school.  
> (I still think I should somehow finish that dragon story)

_"For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse._

_So collapse._   
_Crumble._   
_This is not your destruction._

_This is your birth.”_

_-[n.t.](http://houseangelos.co.vu/tagged/bentobride!poetry)_

* * *

 

Jacián is seven years old when the world collapses around him and comes right back into focus with such sudden clarity that he forgets why he thought the world collapsed in the first place. His first memories are of relatively clean, coppery walls and the smell of sterility and medicine and death, and really, that should've been enough foreshadowing for him to realize what was yet to come. His first memory is realizing that he knows the name of his medicinalier, her age, her years on the job, but not, strangely enough, of who he was. 

( _The boy on the hospitium bed to his right is still in a coma, dark-skinned with clumps of dreadlocks fanned out beneath his head like strange, limp extra appendages, and the one on the left does nothing but stare out the hatch window with his green, green, hazy eyes like the world still hasn't come into focus for him, and the one on the bed opposite, the one with hair like charcoal and stardust, stares at him but doesn't say a word, hasn't since the moment Jacián woke up screaming, panicky and bewildered and without a clue to anything except_ _he was alive_ )

He is seven years old when the hospitium doesn't find any records of him or the older boy that liked to stare or the boy with green eyes or the dreadlocked boy, so when Dreadlocks wakes up, disoriented as they had all been, they're gathered up by the matron and there are streets he knows but doesn't, hastily thrown together buildings that seem to reach for the black, smoky sky, and nameless faces, but he remembers that he's a nameless face too. They were tucked away into a building that reads 'Orphanage,' and were forgotten, another statistic in the ever changing world.

He was not named by his parents, doesn't know if he had any to name him in the first place, doesn't remember if there had been a man and woman cooing over him and arguing what would suit a face like his. "You look like a Jacián." He was confronted a few days afterwards, by the same hazy green eyes and charcoal hair and dark-skin, but it's the boy who stared at him at the hospitium who speaks up first, decidedly final like he knew all along what he wanted to call him and there was no room for debate. 

"Ian sounds better." He'd argued because he had the feeling he wasn't someone who would just lay down and accept anything, but those Green Eyes finally lit up with something like familiarity, faraway look finally reeling back into the present, and Charcoal's shoulders had dropped a fraction of a millimeter like a weight had dropped off and even Dreadlocks smiled begrudgingly even if he looked confused as to why, and it didn't matter that he didn't know anything about himself, what he liked, what he didn't, who he was, because he might have found a place to belong. 

( _"Green Eyes" becomes "Basilio" and "Charcoal" become "Mikhail" and "Dreadlocks" became "Nihcolo" and Jacián wonders if that was when he realized that everything was right-wrong and the world actually still hadn't stopped collapsing around him, not really, because he still had things he stood to lose_ )

 

Jacián is nine years old when the void created by Nihcolo's adoption was nudged aside by a whirlwind of the layered skirts and leather blouses and fiery temper that made up Prospera Capello, who literally crashes into their lives like a volcanic eruption of high-end words and educated opinions. She didn't sit well with him, and there was always the undercurrent of unease that caused them to clash, like two natural disasters meeting in the middle and neither giving up ground and wrecking havoc among neutral parties until Mikhail had to physically haul Prospera out of the room, wriggling and kicking because Prospera didn't scream, never screamed, and Basilio would punch Jacián in the arm and remind him that Prospera was still a lady and they had to treat her like one.

( _But Jacián doesn't trust her, with her knowledge of a world he's never touched and he feels like he should know her, in the opposite way he should know the streets to the orphanage or certain buildings that he's supposedly been to before; not the vague, indistinct buzz in his mind like a situation he's been told so many times he's mistaken it for a memory, but a fuzzy warmth that was like the dim imprint of a touch on the back of his head after the hand was gone, except the warmth was more like scalding tea and burned like danger_ )

He is nine years old when he meets Prospera, but he is eleven years old when he finally, begrudgingly, accepts that she's not going anywhere anytime soon.

( _Her eyes had glittered with triumph and he had rolled his own_ )

"Don't get used to it." He'd admonished, but he'd never stop sighing at the muddy female knee-high boots that were left in their rooms or the stacks of scattered high-end books that were lent to Basilio piled high in the corner of one of the bunk-beds, various items of value that weren't theirs left among their things until Jacián finally relented to give her the bunk beneath Mikhail's ( _Nihcolo's_ , his mind supplied nastily, even though he knew, deep, deep down that Nihcolo was never coming back) so that she could start cleaning up after herself instead of leaving a mess behind whenever she went home.

( _He could give all the excuses he liked, but all his denying doesn't stop his legs from moving of their own accord when he sees her cornered in the alley by the baker's, all fierce pride and spitting insults even though the bullies are two, three heads taller than her, yanking at her amber-sunset-caramel curls maliciously, and then they're not because he might not have liked her very much but she was family just as much as the others, and if they finally make their peace on the curb of the roadrail, her knuckles bruised from where she hit cheekbone and his leg throbbing where he landed a kick wrong, bloody shoulder bumping against bloody shoulder, they don't breathe a word to anyone_ )

 

Jacián is fifteen years old when he feels for the first time the rush of actually being alive, and it's sad that it's when he's being shot at, fingers grappling for a firm hold on moss covered cogs while the ancient machina wails to life. Prospera is yelling somewhere up above him and he feels Basilio's blunt nails hooked into the skin of his wrist like claws, rivulets of blood twirling down his forearm and the dip of his elbow like liquid ribbons, scalding hot and burning a path into his skin, but he also feels the way the metal beneath his hands cave to accommodate the pressure his hands are pushing onto them, age old copper-iron molding as easily as melting snow around his fingertips before Basilio gives one final haul and they're tumbling back onto the level horizontal landscape of safety.

( _But adrenaline is making the blood rush through his ears, pumping a jittery kind of energy through his veins and he can't be satisfied with sitting down and waiting for their opponents to stop firing first before responding, but Mikhail is a shit pilot and Nihcolo's really not doing any better and the machina is jerking all sorts of wrong and Jacián can't launch a proper counter attack, not like this_ )

He is fifteen years old and he realizes for the first time how small his world had been when he finds that it hadn't been coincidence when the metal had crumbled beneath his touch, that he thinks so much better when adrenaline is shooting sparks through his brain, that suddenly the identity that hadn't been important when he had forgotten it almost eight years ago would be important  _now,_ and it all finally makes sense; Prospera's quicksilver speech and Basilio's superhuman senses and Nihcolo's unrivaled intelligence and Mikhail's reckless, fearless perseverance, because he never used to believe in chance before this, but there is no way chance isn't involved.

"We're meant for something  _more._ " He insists, slapping his hands on the table and wincing because they're still sore, with a bit of broken bone, which only makes Prospera roll her eyes at him and Basilio shoot him a sympathetic look, but he doesn't relent because he's so, so sure of it now and in time his friends would see it too, even though right now the only person who is taking him seriously is Mikhail, blue eyes heavy with secrets, quietly thoughtful, staring at him the way he did when he was thirteen years old and in the hospitium bed across from a bewildered, nameless seven year old boy who woke up screaming from a nightmare he can't remember. 

( _Mikhail is the only one who doesn't belittle him for the idea, punching him gently in the shoulder in his quiet way of saying that he was listening, even when Basilio reminds him to get lots of rest and Prospera reminds him not to injure his brain anymore that he already was, using it in thinking about ridiculous things and Nihcolo informs him in that no-nonsense way of his that the chances of his delusional theory brought up in the epinephrine-induced neurological reaction being reality were slim to none, and he clings on to the fact that there may be hope for it yet_ )

 

Jacián is twenty two and he's watching the pieces fall into place around the empire that he had dug out of rubble and dirt with his own two hands, mellowed out from his youth and seeing things clearer than before, even through the tangle of the lives around him that have only grown more complex with age, even through the billowing dust of war and hatred and unrest. 

( _He is looked down on for his age, because every other family in the business is old money and successful, not new money and successful, but he smiles, the picture of serenity and calm, because he has Mikhail to do the anger for him, says nothing because Prospera does instead. He is no longer a child without the knowledge of who he is but an adult who had built his life from the ground up from nothing and no amount of condescension could ever make him lose that pride_ )

He is twenty two and he has the everything at his fingertips, invincible and infallible and king of the world, except not quite, not yet, there's still one more hurdle to overcome but really how bad can it be?

"What could possibly go wrong?" He grins when Prospera shakes her head, her fire dimmer than when they had been younger but still alight, because what could possibly go wrong when they all fit together like a jigsaw pieces and no one could ever hope to match the perfection that they've achieved?

( _But he's wrong, wrong, wrong, and he should've known better than to jinx himself and he curses his own loose tongue because of course, of course everything that could possibly go wrong, would go wrong_ )

 

Jacián is twenty eight and everything is not the way he planned it, because there were those that died that shouldn't have died and those who were still living who shouldn't have been living, the lines between what he had been so sure were wrong and right and everything in between blurred, black and white all smudged into patches of gray. They've lost so, so, so much more than they've gained, sacrificed so much he feels as if they have nothing more left to give but their very souls, and even then he's pretty sure he's already sold his somewhere along the way.

( _It's seared into his mind Prospera howling her grief over a fresh white marble tombstone, the sound of her heart shattering into a million sharp pieces echoing forever in his ears; Mikhail, who had been undefeated, untouchable, in that tiny, tiny basement room, bloody, bleeding, broken, without the strength to even stand on his own two feet; people he knew - had known, unnamed faces of people he should have grown up knowing, the list of casualties went on and on and on; Chuck and Isaia and Niesha, the people who had lives before all of this and who now had no chance of ever backing out even if they wanted to_)

He is twenty eight and the world that he held in the palm of his hand crumbles into sand and dust and ash, an illusion of the power he thought he once held. 

"This is my fault." The admission is heavy on his tongue, like the lead of the bullets they shot from sin-heavy semi-automatics and blood-soaked blades, driving deep into his gut like physical blows, even though Mikhail levels him with a scalding glare, a silent threat that reads ' _don't you dare, don't you dare say it like we didn't know what we were getting into, don't you dare make this about yourself'_ and Prospera's shaking her head so hard her curls (shorn shorter now, in mourning) slap her in the face, even though there are stress lines on her face even though she's four years younger than he is, eyes glazed over like she's about to cry again or slump over in exhaustion. Basilio is silent, hiding away in the corner, in the shadows, like he's afraid the flickering light from the fireplace will reveal the loss written in his body language and it's possible that Nihcolo might be the only one keeping it all together, but there is a certain blank quality in the careful arrangement of his expression as well.

( _It almost takes a literal bucket of ice cold water to wake him up from the panic-induced stupor and then he's scrambling back into action because this is not him, not them; they didn't take these things lying down, and rage and hate and vengeance replacing logic and calm and the careful planning that's kept them alive all these years because all he can think about is_ _what did those people do to deserve to die_?)

 

Jacián is thirty and he realizes that his world had never been destroyed even when his life had fallen apart, but he's all the more stronger for it just the same.

( _The name on the headstone doesn't change, etched deep but not quite for forever, and he's a little more than a little sad to see it there, a hollow echo in his heart that reverberates throughout his bones, world weary, because he never thought he'd get this far in life to be honest, not when he knew he was living on borrowed time, that all of them were, but there are no more tears left for him to shed, and he leaves the bouquet of red-pink protea on the grave without another word, back down the hill to where Basilio is leaning against the side of the car, hands clasped with Aria's, waiting for him to come back_ )

He is thirty, matured and jaded beyond his years, because everything's changed, different, and he walks down the streets that he should know but are as strange to him as they had been in his false childhood, while life around him moved on without ever realizing the sacrifice he had given for everything not to end.

'You're not alone.' He had been promised once, a large hand ruffling through his fluff of unbraided cornrows and a broken-edged smile that was filled with regret and a future that could have been, would have been, should have been.

( _And he is not alone, because the door is unlocked and familiar faces are waiting for him, with bone-deep weariness of of their own, and time begins to move again_)


End file.
